Money isn't everything, especially to folks here, otherwise they wouldn't be retiring early. And very it's easy to say time > $ while you're still working, or early on during retirement. But perspectives may change later during retirement IF money starts to run short. It might not be as simple as time > $, there's a balance...

This is so true. I think taking the part time job was the last expression of my income worries. In the first year of ER I was a bit nervous about generating my own paycheck without any work, so when offered the chance to earn a quick $25k I took it. I went into ER knowing my income needs, but actually living it is a bit different and it's taken me a year to get really comfortable with the flow of money around my various accounts.

Obviously, for people who post on ER, time is more important that money because they choose to spend some prime earning years doing other things. When I ERed at 53.5 I estimated the amount of money in salary and gains I was giving up by not working until 65; it was roughly $2M. I was pretty bored at work and could feel it sapping my love for life and so took the plunge The money would certainly have bought far "nicer" cars and given me far more income and probably meant more for the heirs to inherit, but even on my lesser 53.5 year old's portfolio I estimate I'll be producing 3 to 4 times my budgeted income needs using a conservative investment return. So because I'm single, and don't need to pay for things like college, I made the decision that 12 years of extra freedom and stress free life were worth $2M.

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This discussion has flowed appropriately about something like 'is it worth it going back/continuing to work?' Which is fine, I just want to add a different perspective as I was reading the board a couple days ago from recovery in the cardiac ward.Nope, not worth going back to work for me.

This discussion has flowed appropriately about something like 'is it worth it going back/continuing to work?' Which is fine, I just want to add a different perspective as I was reading the board a couple days ago from recovery in the cardiac ward.Nope, not worth going back to work for me.

Yes that puts it in perspective. I hope you get better soon.

I have a friend who is right now in hospital waiting for a bone marrow transplant for leukemia. She went in to the doctor feeling tired and thought it might be menopause or anemia....turns out it's caner and the next day she's in hospital with restricted visits and going on chemo. Time and health are precious.

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“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Years ago a wise man told me "you can always make more money, but you can't make more time".

You got it. Last year, a good friend finally succumbed to cancer. The same year a fellow TaxAide volunteer learned he has early-onset dementia. In November he was fully alert and capable of preparing a tax return. By January, he barely knew where he was.

I would say yes and no Midpack. The point is you can do things to get more money but you cannot do anything to get more time (total time not time off work). You have x number of day until you die. If, like my Mom or some friends, you die early that number is small and if you retire at 35 and live to 110 that number will be big and you have to plan for a long time.

Retirement planning would be a piece of cake if we knew the value of x. So you need to plan for a large value of x and make sure that your planning will cover you so you don't run short in retirement. However that can happen whether you ER or not...I would tend to guess that ERer's are less likely to have a problem BECAUSE they did the planning. That guy that thought he would work until he dies and so never bothered to plan then gets laid off at 60 and has major health issues at 65 is probably the one that has neither the time or the money

I'm willing to take that risk and soon...maybe even sooner than I planned initially

The "answer" is definitely yes and no, there's no avoiding some level of uncertainty re: when to retire. We all make that decision on our own terms, with no guarantees. The best any of us can do is choose what probability we can accept - all of us will be surprised in the end, some positively, others not.

I guess my point was it's almost meaningless to say time>$ money early on. So is using the unfortunate minority whose lives are short as a basis for the decision, most of us are likely to enjoy long retirements, so that's what we have to plan for. Only when you're at the end of your plan can you say with any authority what the right balance is between time and $...

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Originally Posted by SteveNU

Years ago a wise man told me "you can always make more money, but you can't make more time".

You don't have to be very wise to know it's pretty hard to "make more money" when you're 70, 80 or 90 years old. Retirement plans fail in the end, never in the beginning when "you can always make more money" might be more likely...

I think the idea of doing some contracting after retirement is good for me if I allocate the money to something that my SWR would not support, like a very expensive vacation or a car upgrade or something like that. My retirement income won't allow for flying Business Class and staying in super nice hotels, so the extra work could pay for those. I've noticed that when I've done extra freelance work in the past it helped to do things like that so the work seemed immediately rewarding.

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